


Endless Forms Most Beautiful

by distorted_prose



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode-specific characters mentioned in passing, Even the harpsichord is people, Kissing, M/M, Mind Palace, Post-Episode: s01e08 Fromage, Reference to canon-typical violence and gore from start, Season 1, That Ladder, split POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27884920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distorted_prose/pseuds/distorted_prose
Summary: Hannibal has nothing but confidence in his stamina to deal with people’s blindnesses – to exploit and manipulate oversight as he sees fit - but to beseenpossesses a different pull and set of rules altogether . . ."Pain will provide only so much distraction, Will".
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 13





	Endless Forms Most Beautiful

In the palace of his memories, Dr Lecter affords Tobias Budge some small space. A little larger than the waiting room, pride of place is granted to Lecter's own estimation of Douglas Wilson repurposed as a violoncello. (Whilst mining an FBI account for crime scene photos might afford him accuracy, between details from Will and the little imaginative stretch required of TattleCrime's prurient attempt at journalism, Lecter is satisfied).

The rest of the space is filled with sensory prompts:  
The shop-bell from Chordophone summons phrases of Budge's composition, the timbre of which Lecter can alternate at will between the original and how he imagines the same would sound wrought from Wilson's throat. (There was a mutual understanding when he tasked Budge with restringing his harpsichord, that catgut, steel and polymer were the materials farthest from his mind... An object of beauty already, every newly pitch-perfect note is made all the more exquisite for this knowledge).

A glass of Vidal brings to mind the meal Tobias insulted in his readiness to believe he had poisoned, followed by his curt disappearance.  
He assuages this effrontery - and the raw barb of having been surreptitiously observed killing - every time he recalls choking-off Franklyn's vacuous words by breaking his neck; the delicious _snap_ a mental cue he has twinned with breaking Budge's arm. The memories of the violence preceding and following this he currently mutes; quietly watching Will wander from crime-scene marker to marker in his office, a duplex of his given statement - paltry in comparison, purposely limited in its detail - his guide.

_It’s nice when someone sees us – or has the ability to see us . . ._

He has nothing but confidence in his stamina to deal with people's blindnesses – to exploit and manipulate oversight as he sees fit - but to be _seen_ possesses a different pull and set of rules altogether. It takes effort to suppress the thrill of how much he could share with Will in this moment, to crush the frustration that the visceral adrenaline rush of fighting to the death is nowhere to be found in the dry formalities of a mere statement...

Emptied of people, stillness settles on the chaos of the office and he finds himself wondering just how much Will could intuit if only he knew to _look_.

"You broke his arm?" Will glances over from the ladder.

Lecter thought it likely something a coroner would not miss, and with carefully crafted calm replies: "His dominant arm." _Efficiently_. He walks over, choosing to tune-out the pain in his injured leg. "Having exhausted his options to further stab or garrotte me" - Will flinches, flexing his bandaged hand - "he reached for the ornament. Fortunately, I was closer".

He watches Will fumble some aspirin from the container in his pocket, swallow it and look out of the window, thoughts wandering between crime scenes. He senses as much as observes his hesitancy when he speaks: "When... Tobias Budge killed the officers, I was outside. I thought... I thought I heard a dog get hit by a car".

"Another auditory hallucination?"

"Like the racoon in the chimney. But I went outside to check and if I hadn't..."

The alternatives weigh heavily in the silence as his voice trails off, a divergence of choices: less death, more death – Will’s . . . Possessive anger flares in him at the thought – quiet, sinuous. Minutely he shifts his weight onto his right leg, letting the pain radiate, like slowly unclenching a fist; focusing on the sensation, displacing the feeling.

~ * ~

In the periphery of Will's gaze, Dr Lecter shifts almost imperceptibly, tugging his mind from its vagaries of ‘what if’s back to the uneasy cognitive dissonance that has been gradually pervading since he arrived on the scene with Jack. And it is ‘on the scene’ that presents his most immediate concern: the bright crime-scene markers are an imposition by numbers, adding glaring insult to an environment corrupted of its former order and refinement.

The cut to Lecter's lip Will finds even more disconcerting. It had proved disquieting enough before to see him anything shy of immaculate - he forcefully blinks away the image of him wrist-deep in Silvestri’s victim's abdomen - and the cuts, the blood, the diffidently suppressed limp are each... Discomfiting.

And yet, even in spite of these things, Will isn't sure he has ever seen Dr Lecter looking so _vital_. The soigné exterior might have ripped, have bruised, have bled; but underneath, and hidden close between the lines of his statement is coiled a strange kind of energy, taut and controlled.

Will recognises it: "Did it feel... Good, fighting for your life? Killing Budge? Powerful?"

He had said not long ago that words are pack-hunters and between them in this moment gapes the opportunity to chase each other down, pin Dr Lecter and demand he validate the monstrous, his goddamned “sprig of zest”

_It’s beautiful in its own way – giving voice to the unmentionable . . ._

Closing in half a pace, Lecter takes hold of the ladder, imperturbable calm barely rippling, "As good as killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs?"

_Slow-clapping, sat in the theatre; interred in a shallow grave; suspended at the firing range – ‘See? See...?’_

Will stiffens back against the rungs, pushing his thumb hard into the dressing on his hand - as if the echo of pain could vanquish Hobbs, might somehow redress the fact that this is as close to ‘yes’ as he is likely to hear from Lecter (that the answer is yes because _his_ answer is yes – a jarring, tangled contingency...)

It is wholly unexpected when Dr Lecter carefully prises his hands apart, holding them, loosely. His voice is as gently insistent: "Pain will provide only so much distraction, Will".

The mute offer of his words scatters his thoughts like a shoal startled. He had missed when proximity had modulated into this, into intimacy; from feet apart to a question of inches... This close Will notices the square patterning to Lecter's shirt (he is focused on his collar; he is far too close for eye contact) and he can feel the hairs raise across the nape of his neck in response to breath warm and even against his cheek...

There are words – _I am not your patient_ – he doesn't trust himself even to breathe.  
Will finds himself wavering tenuously between want and need: the need to hear, in no uncertain terms, that wielding power over another person's life is nothing short of exalting - even if that leaves them both flawed, human, fallible... And want? Want is why he hasn’t bolted, hasn’t shrugged this all off stumbling over excuses. Want fuelled an hour's drive through the snow, spurred equally the kiss that prompted it—

He tilts his head and it’s like connecting a circuit, closing his mouth against Lecter’s. Hannibal's.

The grip on his wrists tightens fractionally. Drinking in Hannibal’s appearance earlier had summoned unbidden the thought of raising his fingers to his lips and _touching_ , thumbing away the blood in a soft caress... But now, kissing, Will tentatively parts his lips and tastes.

(He imagines this might sting: that it would smart more to press harder, to graze with his teeth, to suck, and the sudden, vice-like pressure to Lecter's grip suggests he is correct as skin is split anew, drawing blood - the taste on his lips, his tongue...)  
  
Will is crushed bodily against the ladder - a rung solid, dull pain to the back of his head - and there isn’t room to breathe . . .

**Author's Note:**

> ...I think I've sat on this fic for possibly seven years o.O Thanks all the same for jumping in the time machine with me and revisiting probably one of the best episodes of S.1 ;)  
> I have some idea of how I might continue this, but should the plot-bunny vanish, a separate, more loosely-related fic may be warranted, IDK. (Like, I'm re-watching all the series on/off, but it's difficult to write and sustain the character emotion involved from a point where one of them has no idea just how bad it's going to get :/ And equally, it's Hannibal: it's a headf*ck of a fandom to write in full-stop x_x)
> 
> P.S. For anyone pondering the title, it's shamelessly yoinked from an Orphan Black episode - which in turn pinched it from Darwin's _Origin of the Species_.


End file.
